A familiar bang wakes Isabel up from just sitting and staring at the figure the plumber has placed in front of her. She’s come to dread that noise and, not for the first time, she thinks about abdicating her responsibility of the boarding house and running back to Dallas as fast as her long legs will carry her. But today, like all the days before, will not be that day. Isabel Bishop may be many things but she isn’t a quitter.
She sighs heavily as she makes her way over to the cupboard under the stairs. When she was a kid she had been afraid of it, primarily because it was dark and dank and generally full of spiders. But also because of the strange banging noises that would emanate from it, usually in the middle of the night, which had convinced her that a poltergeist had made it his home.
It was only when Isabel was entering her teen years that she’d realized the ghostly sound actually came from the ancient house’s water boiler. Her mother would routinely emerge from the cupboard with her sleeves rolled up, wrench in hand, having solved the problem of the banging without even breaking a sweat. It was one of the many ways \ Caroline Bishop had run the boarding house with ease and grace. She had an infuriating habit of making everything look easy, something Isabel seriously doubted she would ever be able to manage.
Isabel yanks open the door of the cupboard, hands on her hips, gunslinger style. “So, old friend, we meet again.”
The banging is louder now that the door is open and Isabel can’t help but remember the plumber’s disgust at the state of their pipes. She wonders what he would say if he heard this racket. She fiddles with buttons and dials on the side of the monstrosity, not having any idea what she’s doing, only knowing it’s worked before. If anything, the banging gets even louder and Isabel starts to wonder if the machine might just explode and take her and the whole house with it and, in that moment, she’s not convinced it would be such a bad thing.
Isabel shakes her head, telling herself that line of thought isn’t going to help anyone. “Come on, Issy, you were training to be a surgeon for Christ’s sake! You were going to fix people’s hearts! You can figure out how this freakin’ ancient hunk of junk works.” She mutters to herself as she rolls up her shirtsleeves and bites her lip, putting on what Jamie refers to as her ‘concentration face.’
After a few minutes of fiddling with dials, Isabel is less convinced she’s up to the task of preventing the boiler from what seems to be an inevitable impending disaster. In that moment, the hunk of metal in front of her becomes the focus of all her frustrations, all of her anger and she finds herself all out of patience. “Come on, you piece of crap!” She levels a sharp kick to the side of the boiler, barely noticing the jolt of pain vibrating through her foot. “Work, goddam you, you stupid, crappy piece of trash!” Her language loses its imagination as her sense of frustration threatens to reach epic proportions.
She kicks the water heater again, but this time her anger doesn’t shield her from the pain of metal hitting her toes, which just makes her madder, as if the boiler had grown arms, reached out and hurt her. She starts hammering on the side of the boiler with her hands, her fists, her feet, letting out all the anger she feels on the immovable inanimate object in front of her. She only stops when she runs out of energy, pausing to breathe in heavily.
“You feel any better after that?” The low, husky voice from behind her makes her spin around, half-jumping out of her skin in shock.
Her mouth opens and closes, doing a pretty good impression of a codfish as she faces the man standing in front of her. Her throat goes dry as she takes in his dark eyes, dancing with amusement, the wry smile his mouth is forming, which makes her heart do a flip-flop in her chest. He’s tall, despite the fact that he’s leaning against the doorframe looking all relaxed and sexy in his perfectly-fitting jeans and black leather jacket. The look he’s giving her tells her he knows exactly what she’s thinking and she starts blushing like a schoolgirl.
When she finally recovers the power of speech she folds her arms over her chest and gives him a narrow-eyed look. “You know, it’s not polite to sneak up on people.”
He raises his eyebrows, making no move to wipe the amused smirk off of his face. “With all the racket that was going on, I thought someone was being attacked.” He looks between her and the boiler. “I hadn’t realized you were just going to town on a poor, defenseless, hunk of metal.”
Isabel feels herself blush again. Since when does she blush? She’s fully aware of how ridiculous she must look to this mystery man right now. “Trust me, that hunk of metal has a seriously bad attitude. He had it coming.” She rolls her eyes comically and is rewarded by a husky laugh that sets intimate parts of her tingling. To avoid staring again at the gorgeous man in front of her, as if she’d never seen a member of the opposite sex before, she tells herself to get a grip. “So, what can I do for you?”
He looks her over, from her converse, up her skinny jeans, wet and clingy from the basement, to the shapeless checked shirt, finally stopping at her face, which she’s sure is probably covered in grime. She shivers involuntarily under his gaze and the open carnality that flashes across his features so suddenly she thinks she must have imagined it.
“I’m here to rent a room.” The prosaic nature of his request is exactly the opposite of what his expression has told her and the surprise shocks her out of her daydreaming.
“Right.” Isabel gives herself a little mental shake. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, Mr…” She waits for him to fill in the blank and when he just stares at her she becomes acutely aware of how close they are. There’s not a lot of room in the cupboard, and this stranger’s proximity is suddenly overpowering. She moves to walk out, but has to squeeze past him as he still occupies the majority of the doorway.
He doesn’t move aside to make the moment less awkward and, as she passes him, she catches a smell of soap and something else, something undeniably male that makes her thighs clench involuntarily.
“If you’ll follow me, we can see what room is available.” Isabel leads the way, straight-backed to the corner of the entrance hall that serves as a basic front desk. She feels, rather than sees, him follow behind her, sensing his eyes on her in a way that makes her conscious of what a mess she must look. Not that it matters – she’s working, not having a wild night on the town.
She busies herself opening ‘the big black book’ as her mother had called it, the record of all the tenant bookings. In the months prior to Isabel taking over, there’s a steady stream of dates and corresponding names, but in the last few months they’ve been dwindling. She shakes her head. Now isn’t the time to dwell on that, especially not in front of a paying customer.
“So how long were you planning on staying?” She looks up as he shrugs.
“Not sure yet.” He folds his big arms over his broad chest. “At least a month, I reckon.”
“All right.” Isabel has to stop herself from doing a little fist pump. A month’s income from a room wasn’t a fortune but it would at least put a dent in some of the bills that were beginning to take up permanent residence in her office. He has the whole bad boy thing working for him and Isabel remembers her mother’s warnings about taking in shady characters. They weren’t worth the trouble. But beggars can’t be choosers, Mom.
The mystery man seems to sense her reticence. “I’ll pay cash, the whole month up front.”
And just like that, Isabel ignores her better judgment. “Well, you’re in luck. We have a few rooms available.” ‘A few’ is a bit of an understatement. “You can choose between a garden room or one of the larger rooms that face out to the street.” She looks up at him expectantly.
He just shrugs, looking around. “You got anything on the ground floor?”
Isabel frowns, wondering if this guy has any social skills at all. “Sure, but it’s a little on the small side -,”
“I’ll take it.” He doesn’t even let her finish before he’s digging into his pocket and peeling off notes from a wedge of cash.
“Don’t you want to see the room first?” She frowns up at him, trying to figure him out.
“Does it have a bed?” He looks at her, nonplussed, his dark eyes enigmatic.
She wonders if this guy is for real. “Yes, of course, but -,”
“Then I’ll take it.” He looks at the rate card, propped on the table and starts counting out bills.
Isabel blinks at his bluntness. The taciturn, cute-guy routine is starting to get old. He seems to take himself way too seriously and Isabel can’t resist having a little fun with him. Besides, he’s way too handsome to be straight. “And you’ll be staying with your girlfriend…or…boyfriend?” She covers a smile at the look on his face. Nope, definitely not gay, she thinks to herself and wonders why it should even matter to her. “Double occupancy is extra.” She shrugs and smiles at him sweetly.
“It’ll just be me.” His voice is flat and his expression is equally unsmiling.
“All right. So what name should I put your booking under, Mr…?” She locks eyes with him this time, challenging him.
“Wesley, just Wesley is fine.” He goes back to counting out the bills, but not before Isabel has seen the hardness settle over his eyes.
Isabel swallows, the alarm bells in her head ringing out again. This guy has trouble written all over him. But she thinks about the house’s leaky pipes, the crumbling front porch, the red numbers all over the bank balance and knows she doesn’t have the luxury of being as choosy as her mother had been about her tenants. Her financial issues have come to a head, but that doesn’t mean that she has to be stupid.
“Well, ‘Just Wesley,’ I need your last name or I can’t book you in.” Isabel taps on the desk impatiently with her pen. “It’s the law.” That wasn’t true strictly speaking, but Isabel had no intention of telling him she needs his full name to run a background check on him, just like she does with all her tenants.
Wesley turns on the charm, smiling at her rakishly and leaning a little closer. “And do you always do everything to the letter of the law?”
Isabel feels his magnetism pull her towards him, her body betraying her. She swallows in a vain attempt to stop her voice from coming out hoarse. “I do when it concerns my business.”
The way his eyes widen is almost comical. “This is your place?”
Isabel raises an eyebrow and makes a show of looking around them. “Do you see anyone else here?”
“No, it’s just, I mean you’re so young…I didn’t think…” He trails off, looking uncomfortable and Isabel gets the distinct impression that he’s not used to being caught on the back foot.
“Well, life’s just full of surprises, isn’t it?” She doesn’t manage to keep the bitterness out of her voice and Wesley clearly doesn’t miss it, but he keeps his questions to himself.
“This is the Bishop Boarding House, right?” He looks towards the door as if he might have walked into the wrong place.
“The one and only.” Isabel plasters a fake bright smile on her face, remembering her mother’s mantra of always being nice to the paying customers. “I’ll show you your room. Do you want to get your bag first?”
Wesley blinks at her as if he’d forgotten why he was there, but he recovers quickly. “I don’t have much. I’ll get it later.” He motions for her to lead the way, giving her a curious glance like she’s a puzzle he can’t quite figure out.